Stanford receives $5 million from Eloise Mabury Knapp trust

STANFORD -- Another chapter in the Christian Science bequest case closed
last week when Stanford received approximately $5 million from the trust of
Eloise Mabury Knapp.

Distribution of the Knapp trust follows a court-approved settlement in
1993 that allocated 53 percent to the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in
Boston, while Stanford and Museum Associates, the support group for the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, would each receive 23.5 percent.

That agreement capped nearly two years of litigation over the estate of
Knapp. The trust of her sister, Bella Mabury, subject to the same settlement,
is still on appeal.

Knapp¹s estate currently is worth approximately $21 million and
Mabury¹s is about $75 million. Depending on the outcome of the Mabury
trust appeal, Stanford could receive approximately $17 million more.

In approving the settlement agreement of the three charitable
organizations in December 1993, a Los Angeles superior court judge dismissed
the claims of eight distant relatives who filed objections the previous month
to the Mabury settlement.

Iris Brest, Stanford associate general counsel, said that briefs for the
appeal are expected to be filed in April and May, after which there will be a
hearing.

Knapp and Mabury named the church as their beneficiary, provided it met
certain requirements, with Stanford and Museum Associates as beneficiaries if
it did not. Those three parties reached agreement on a settlement of the
trusts, to which certain distant relatives objected.

Eloise Mabury Knapp had no direct ties to the university, but her sister,
Bella Mabury, enrolled on opening day, Oct. 1, 1891, and attended for one
year. Mabury died in 1964 and Knapp in 1973.

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